After his shower and pulled me up by my arm. There we were, having breakfast together with his parents. They had made room for me and all. I had just finished pouring my fruit juice. As if it was the most normal thing in the world.
I was still staring into space in half shock when his father started interrogating me.
“And what do you do for work, Luc?”
“I am on disability, due to medical problems.”
“Ah, okay,” the dad replied.
“And you?” I asked back. That's just polite.
"At the government".
I choked on my fruit juice. I could barely manage to cough
"Interesting!"
Nondedju, what a sobering morning. Jan had to go to work at 10 o'clock, so we left after breakfast. His parents were super friendly in saying goodbye! My bond with Joris never resulted in a truly committed relationship. We continued to see each other regularly for fun and had a good chat together, but he did not want a permanent relationship. I thought this was a bit of a shame, but I was also happy with friend-ship! Sultry adventures like those with Jan happened more often; I really enjoyed it too. It was all not the same as my relationship with Tim had been. Such a deep love like that, that was something on another level. Not that I stopped entering into permanent relationships after Tim, far from it. One such relation-ship was with Peter, but that too came to a painful end. One evening I went to Bar Les Amis with a friend. It was a special theme night, it was a drag queen show, or like
we said it then: “a transvestite show”. I personally had no need or desire to dress or appear feminine; I also wasn't attracted to men, gay or bi, who did that. But it
was a lot of fun to see! The show was well put together and my buddy and I enjoyed ourselves.
At the end of the show, the artists held a sort of “reveal” moment. They took off their cloaks and also took off their wigs, so that you could see the man beneath the woman.
My love was in between. Peter, my friend, was among them. I didn't know what to say. I was so shocked – I didn't know this. I even felt nauseous. I grabbed my coat and fled outside. Air, breath, recover a little from the shock. I had absolutely nothing against men who did this - to each their own taste and desire - but the fact that my love wanted that, enjoyed it, and had not told me that - everything rushed through my head -
“Luc!”, I heard. "Luc!"
I looked and saw him standing there. He came over and grabbed me.
“Do you now understand why I didn't say anything about this?” he said.
“But you, Peter? You?"
At that point we hadn't seen each other for a week. I had thoughts that he wanted to break up with me.
“I'm not ready for such things, Peter,” I said.
Then I started to understand why he was equally distant towards me.
“We need to talk about this,” I began,
but he put his finger on my mouth.
“I like this,” he told me. “I also want to continue doing this.”
He knew I would find this very difficult.
“Those other friends of yours don't like me,” I said.
I started to cry.
“We're better off breaking up and just being friends,” he said.
He gave me a kiss and walked back inside. I stood against the wall while crying. Friends came to comfort me. I felt such disgust, I just couldn't do anything about it. I felt such sadness too.
I found “transvestites”, drag queens, physically dirty. Even though I certainly enjoyed those shows, I just couldn't help this. I also found lesbians “dirty” for a long time. I felt bad about this but I couldn't do any-thing about it - I understood how illogical this was, because yes, I was attracted to men myself, had sex with men as a man, why shouldn't women just have sex with each other - but yet I couldn't do anything about that "dirty" feeling I got when I thought about this. After my relationship with Peter, I once lost a
bet with friends in a café at Gerda's. I don't remember what the bet was about, but I was convinced I was right. I was wrong after all, and had to keep my word. The stakes were determined as follows:
“Lucske, if you are wrong, you dress up like a common whore and sit here, with a red lamp and already, behind the window!”.
Café at Gerda was located almost next to Hasselt station, every day passed by thousands of people com-muting to and from work. I had lost, so I was done. Date, time and duration were agreed: on a Friday evening, from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM, I would decked out in make-up, wig and high heels behind Gerda's window to sit. A chair on a table and me on the chair, as a showpiece. People came to see that. The whole cafe was full of people who had heard about the bet, many friends came to laugh and enjoy the stunt. People waved at me from the street, some stuck out their tongues, and even took pictures. I actually en-joyed playing along too – I put on a good show there, with my suspenders. Gerda and her husband winked at me towards the end of “my show”. Operation “dirty whore” was very successful: there was a lot of fun and entertainment. The evening ended in the hospital – how could it be otherwise. The man who chal-lenged me to the bet showed up near the end with some police officers to scare me for fun. I had not seen that they had arrived together and was indeed shocked –get out of here quickly! I jumped off the ta-ble and clack, clack.I forgot I still had the high heels on. Both my ankles twisted. Walking was no longer possible. Friends carried me away on a stretcher, still fully adorned. My challenger (a firefighter) wanted to go big and called an ambulance at once, so that the evening would end with even more bells and whis-tles than it started. They had a good laugh in the emergency room.
"What's this all?”, said the doctor.
She took very good care of me. She even washed me - at least the makeup was off. Luckily my ankles turned out not to be broken, but quite sprained. Friends came over with my normal clothes. They drop me off at home. “Luc had an accident, he fell down the stairs!”
Mom said: “Luc, how do you do all this?”
I still have a good laugh when I think back to this story. Dressing up as a “ordinary whore”… It was a differ-ent time. Of course, then I had no idea that one of my future sweethearts would love to dress up as a woman. It's something that made us laugh and be entertained from a distance, not something we did. To suddenly be confronted with this in my own circle, in my “we”,… That was intense. Accepting, it remained so difficult. The peaks of joy and love alternated with valleys of gloom. Even though I was now living fully as I was and no longer hiding myself - anything but - it remained... difficult. I kept feeling so dirty some-times. Guilty. Wrong. Sometimes I made very strange jumps because of that dirty feeling of wrongness.
I had many friends in Hasselt, several, of course, from the gay environment. One evening I came home to such a comrade. We had gone out together and I was going to stay overnight at his apartment. In the hall-way we met a young woman, Anna, who also lived in the building. My comrade knew her and we started chatting.
“Say, Luc, can I tell you something?” said Anna.
"Naturally?"
“If you make love to me, you'll never want a man again!”
Ha!
“Wow! Do you think you're that good then?”
“You bet,” she said. What a confident woman! I thought.
“Alé, you mean that?”, I said.
"Of course."
Hmm, I thought. Not shooting is always wrong, right? Who knows ...
“Ha, okay then!”
I had sex with her. Technically, we had sex. We made love.
“So, how did you like it?” she said. We had just finished.
“Well, I think I'll stick with the men.”
I didn't find anything wrong with it. And I was happy about that, it confirmed my own feelings - but not completely, it was nagging... Sex with Anna had felt a bit strange, also a bit dirty, not fun, but sometimes I also found sex with boys "dirty", I felt a bit dirty...Don't some people say, occasionally, that... you can be “cured” of homosexuality? Maybe this would have been such an opportunity, but I had
it just wasn't done right...This seed settled, somewhere deep in my head, and got
23
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten